Computex 2013: Galaxy Expanding into Motherboards, PSUs, SSDs
by Ian Cutress on June 8, 2013 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- PSUs
- SSDs
- Galaxy
- Motherboards
- Trade Shows
- Z87
- Computex 2013
Galaxy is known more for their graphics cards, and in particular the HOF/SOC series of high end NVIDIA cards - some models of which have featured a white PCB. So you can imagine my surprise to see a motherboard sitting in the line of ‘new products’.
The Galaxy Z87-HOF has one feature which sets it apart from all other Z87 motherboards – it claims to have full PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 support using only one PLX chip. Normally on motherboards we encounter the PLX 8747 which takes 16 CPU lanes and multiplexes/buffers them into 32. The Galaxy Z87-HOF uses an upgraded version of the PLX with the number 8780, providing 64 lanes of output for the 16 lanes input. The 8747 version costs around $40 to the manufacturers, whereas this other model is nearer $100, so we can imagine the Z87 HOF might be a little expensive, although we get full bandwidth and latency of only a single PLX chip, despite the x16 uplink limitation. The Z87-HOF uses the high-end IR3550 ICs from International Rectifier (the same ones we see on Gigabyte UP motherboards) – these are around $4 each and this motherboard has 16.
No word on release date, but apparently extreme overclocking team HKEPC have been providing feedback as to the design and capabilities.
The white PCB of the Galaxy 780 SOC was also on display:
Also their line of Thunder SSDs (using Sandforce controllers) and new PSU:
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Aikouka - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
Hm, I can only spot 4x SATA 3 and 1x mSATA on that motherboard. There's probably an eSATA port on the back, which may be the last available SATA port from the PCH (6x SATA3 if I'm not mistaken). That seems a bit low for such a high-end board!kyralfie - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
Are you sure that those SSDs are based on Sandforce controllers and not Jmicron JMF667H as many claim? Or am I mixing up something?jasonelmore - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
cuz the bandwidth are all being saved for the PLX chipZok - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
There also appears to be a mSATA slot between the last two x16 slots.Also - I think I spot measurement points below the last x16 slot. Pretty neat!
dac7nco - Saturday, June 8, 2013 - link
"some models of which have featured a white PCB"... Ian Cutress may have just made a tweakboy joke. :)